


thrice for another day

by angelsdemonsducks



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Blood and Injury, Light Angst, M/M, Magic, Mentioned Roman - Freeform, Pre-Slash, Witch!Logan, logan:, logan: first of all you're going to live with me now, remus: also my dad tried to kill me bc i'm magic isn't that neat?, remus: hi you're hot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28735614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelsdemonsducks/pseuds/angelsdemonsducks
Summary: It’s funny; the more he moves, the more damage he does to his insides, the more his bones shift in ways that they’re definitely not supposed to shift. But if he stops, he’ll die for sure. He’s got one chance, and it lies deep in the forest. Deeper, perhaps, than he will be able to go.He keeps walking. One foot in front of the other.Remus is maybe, possibly dying. Just a little bit. His magic is spent, and his ribs are definitely messed up. His only hope is to get to the witch that's supposed to live in this forest and throw himself on their mercy.It turns out that the witch is hot.
Relationships: Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders & Logic | Logan Sanders, Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders/Logic | Logan Sanders
Comments: 19
Kudos: 126





	thrice for another day

**Author's Note:**

> Additional content warnings for death mentions, discussion of terrible parents, and Remus-typical imagery.
> 
> Title is from 'Come Along' by Cosmo Sheldrake.
> 
> This was written for my 'Internal Injury' square on my BTHB. I'm literally having so much fun with these y'all

One foot in front of the other. That’s what’s most important right now.

Remus just wishes it didn’t hurt so much.

There is something wrong inside of him. His internal organs aren’t where they should be, aren’t working properly, and he’s fairly certain that at least a few of his ribs are fractured, shattered, ground into powder, driving themselves into his lungs and heart. If someone were to cut him open right now, his insides would make for an interesting sight. The thought of doing it himself crosses his mind, and he lingers on the imagery for a moment before dismissing it. He would die of blood loss before he could see anything truly worthwhile, and what would the point of that be?

He could try to keep himself alive with his magic, perhaps. But if his magic isn’t strong enough to protect his body from a mere fall, it’s probably not strong enough to let him dissect himself. Disappointing, that.

The pain is a distant thing, now. He’s pretty sure that’s not a good thing, but if it means he can keep himself walking, he’ll take it. His body will have to give out eventually, of course, but perhaps he can use magic to keep himself moving when that happens. Like sleepwalking. Roman used to sleepwalk when they were kids—

No. Nope. Not going there. Not thinking about Roman. Not now.

One foot in front of the other.

He stumbles, catching himself on a tree. He coughs, and tastes blood. The pain should be debilitating. He barely feels it, barely registers any more than a slight stinging in his chest. It’s funny; the more he moves, the more damage he does to his insides, the more his bones shift in ways that they’re definitely not supposed to shift. But if he stops, he’ll die for sure. He’s got one chance, and it lies deep in the forest. Deeper, perhaps, than he will be able to go.

He keeps walking. One foot in front of the other. His vision is graying, tilting.

He coughs again. This time, the blood splatters out and onto his chin. It’s the only blood that’s outside of his body, the only real sign of injury. All the rest of the blood is on the inside, which should be fine, since it’s where blood is supposed to be. Except, there are places inside the body where blood shouldn’t be, either. Like in the lungs.

He may drown in his own bodily fluids. Under any other circumstances, he might find the thought thrilling. What a grotesque way to go. But he can barely focus on walking.

And he doesn’t particularly want to die. Fantasies are one thing. The reality is quite another.

Roman would probably—

No.

His vision goes dark. When he blinks the blackness away, he’s lying on the ground, on his side. Leaves crunch as he shifts his head, and he can feel dirt beneath his fingertips. There is a tickling feeling on his hand; some kind of bug, probably. Ants? He can’t make his head move enough to look. He can’t really move at all, actually. He reaches for his magic, what little he has, and finds nothing there at all. It slips from his grasp like a wet bar of soap.

This is it, then.

He was once a prince, heir to a throne, future ruler of millions. Now, he is going to die alone, in exile, on a forest floor where his flesh will become food for scavengers and his bones will house mushrooms. In death, life. He hopes the mushrooms are interesting ones, at least. Perhaps one day, someone will stumble across what is left of his corpse and thinks him beautiful. Or frightening. Either would work for him, so long as he’s not boring.

Blood trickles from his lips. He doesn’t try to stop it. He sighs, his shattered ribs refusing to rise and fall as they should.

But then—

“Who intrudes in my—”

A voice, low and irritated, one that cuts off into a sudden curse. There are footsteps, the crackle of leaves being trod on, and then, there is someone kneeling by Remus’ side. Dark hair, tan skin, weathered clothing. More than that, he can’t make out; everything is turning blurry.

But perhaps he managed to walk far enough after all.

“Who—” the witch says, because it has to be the witch. Who else would be this deep in the forest? Besides Remus, that is, and Remus is desperate. “Can you hear me?”

He tries to say, “Yes.” What comes out instead is a mixture of a groan and a whine, like the starving dragon hatchlings his parents keep beneath the palace for the worst sorts of criminals. The magic ones. In retrospect, he’s very lucky that all his father did to him was toss him from a tower. He could have been eaten alive.

Such is the fate of those who meddle in forces beyond that of the natural world.

There is a hand against his chest. It should hurt, he thinks, but it just feels warm. Warm and tingly, like a rush of bubbles fizzing across his skin, like a burst of bright sunlight if sunlight had weight, and it’s magic. That’s what it is. The feeling of someone else’s magic. He can’t explain how he knows, because he has never felt another person’s magic so close to him, but he is certain that he’s right.

“Your ribs have gone through your lungs,” the witch says. “Your magic is keeping you alive, but not for much longer. You’re bleeding internally.”

This is nothing that Remus does not already know. But he rather likes the witch’s voice, so that’s alright.

“I can’t heal you here,” the witch says. “I’m going to move you to my home. I apologize in advance. This is likely to hurt.”

He laughs a little bit. And then chokes, because his mouth is full of blood. The witch makes an alarmed sound, and in that moment, sounds exactly like Roman used to whenever Remus snuck back into their room broken and bloody from one experiment or another, back before Roman hated him, back when he kept his secret. And then, the moment passes, and the witch places both of his hands on Remus, and Remus has no time to try to make a joke about it because then, there is a strange buildup of pressure in the air, and his chest is on fire, and there is blood coating his tongue, and everything goes black.

Awareness comes and goes in flashes.

The pain is always present, in varying degrees. Sometimes he can think past it, and sometimes it suffuses _everything_ , and he doesn’t even have the breath to scream because his lungs are full of blood and bone rather than air.

Sometimes the witch is standing over him, chanting in a language that his mind does not recognize but that sends his marrow singing. Sometimes, the witch is off to the side, leafing frantically through books and muttering to himself. Sometimes, Remus is alone, and he likes that least of all, because it forces him to question whether or not he’s hallucinating the whole thing. It wouldn’t be the first time.

He is in a different place, though. A room, with a bed, a table, bookshelves, a window. He is no longer lying on the forest floor, at any rate, and he tries to believe that he wouldn’t imagine an empty room to die in. Tries to believe that the witch is real, that all of this is real.

Sometimes he wakes up thrashing, the pain too much for his body to bear. The witch is always with him, then, right by his side, demanding that he stay still, telling him that he’s going to hurt himself, and Remus wants to laugh and cry and shout all at once, because he’s already done that. He can’t hurt himself worse than he already has. He certainly can’t hurt himself worse than anybody else already has.

His father’s eyes, his face twisted into a snarl. His mother, hand over her mouth. Roman, his face pale, standing there, doing nothing as their father dangles the oldest twin out the window to die, calling him demon, calling him abomination, calling him no-son-of-mine.

After that, would it be better to die?

No. He wants to live. But it hurts to remember, hurts more than any physical wound.

Once, he wakes, and he thinks Roman is there. He calls to him for help, but he turns away, his face blank. And Remus really does scream, then, ignoring the way his chest protests.

And then, the witch is there again, hands glowing and sparking with power. The pain eases, and Remus sleeps.

Awareness comes and goes in flashes, right up until it doesn’t.

He opens his eyes, and he is in a room, simple and austere. The walls are wooden, and the floor is hard-packed dirt, and there is hardly any decoration at all, save for the bookshelves that line one wall. And even these books look worn, look nothing like the well-bound, gold-embossed books that filled the library back at home. These books are rugged, seem dusty and dirty, held together by willpower rather than by adequate bookbinding. There is a table, too, and one of the books is laying open on it, but Remus can’t make out what it says from this distance.

He’s lying on a cot, covered by a thick woolen blanket. He fingers the material for a moment; it’s scratchy, not particularly comfortable, but it’s warm. Serviceability over comfort seems to be a theme here.

There’s no one else in the room. So he takes a breath and tries to sit up. This turns out to be a mistake, and all of his insides inform him of this at once, pain flaring hot and far sharper than he remembers it being before. It wrests a noise from him, short and pained, and he flops back on the cot, panting.

The noise must be loud enough to be heard even outside of the room, because he looks up, and suddenly, the witch is there. What had been a blurry, indistinguishable face resolves into sharp features, and dark blue eyes that flash no less dangerously for being obscured by glasses.

“And what do you think you’re doing?” the witch snaps. His arms are crossed, and he’s scowling. Remus doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone so attractive in all his life. “Refrain from undoing my work, if you please.”

“Uhhhh,” Remus says, because he’s very eloquent like that.

The witch stares at him for a moment, and then rolls his eyes, crossing the room to the table and leafing through the book there.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me what you’re doing here,” the witch says, without looking up. “Or why three of your ribs were practically pulverized, and another two were sticking through your lungs. And still might be if you move too much,” he adds sharply, even though Remus hasn’t tried to move again.

Right. Okay. Questions. He can answer questions. He should do that, instead of focusing super hard on the way the witch’s hands deftly turn the pages, on how long his fingers are, on how smooth and confident his movements are as a whole. He should try to focus on something else. For sure. Definitely.

Only, he’s never been very good at getting himself to do that. He can tell himself what he needs to focus on all he wants. That doesn’t mean his brain will actually do it.

“Right, uh,” he says, and then the rest of the words fall out like vomit. Or like the blood, from earlier. “My dad threw me off a tower.”

The witch’s motions still. He looks up. His face is blank.

“What,” he says.

“Yeah, uh, it wasn’t fun? Actually, the falling part was kind of fun, ‘cause I’ve never done that before, and have you ever fallen from really high up? It feels like flying for a minute, right before you go _splat_.” He grins. “But, yeah, my dearest daddy shoved me off a balcony. I dunno how high up it was. Pretty high. I broke a lot of stuff, but I healed most of it, ‘cept for my chest. I guess I probably should’ve done that first, but I dunno how to, like, target stuff. So I was just like, hey, magic, heal me, and it healed my limbs and then it wouldn’t do any more. But so then I—”

“Wait, stop,” the witch says, and Remus does. “Your father… tried to kill you?”

He sounds faintly sick. Remus watches him, wondering if he’s going to actually be sick, and then gives due consideration to the question.

“Yeah, I guess,” he says. “Huh. You know, I think I hadn’t really processed that yet. My father tried to kill me. I’m pretty sure I was at least supposed to get a trial. Not that anyone ever actually gets acquitted of witchcraft, but still. Burning at the stake might have been cool.”

The witch looks faintly sick now, too; his face has taken on a greyish pallor, and there is a tightness around the corners of his eyes that wasn’t there before.

“He didn’t feed me to the dragons, though,” he tacks on. “Maybe that means he still loves me a little.”

The witch is silent.

“You’re right, probably not,” he says. “There wasn’t much love there to begin with, anyway. I’m sure he was glad for the excuse to have Roman as his heir instead of me.” He sighs, his eyes drifting to the ceiling. It’s wooden, too, and the patterns there are interesting enough to hold his attention for a few seconds, at least.

“Why did you come to me?” the witch asks. His voice is weird. Strained, somehow. Remus glances over to see if something has entered the room and started strangling him in the past few seconds, but no, the witch is still standing there, as healthy and attractive as he was from the moment he walked in. Except his face is still very pale, but maybe he has a condition of some kind.

“I was nearby,” he says. “We were staying over in, you know, Althor? And I kept hearing rumors about the scary witch who lived in the woods and came out at night to steal babies from cradles. So I was probably gonna come looking for you anyway, to see if you really did eat babies, but then I got tossed out of a tower, and I thought that if I was gonna live, I needed somebody to do a better job healing me than I was doing of healing myself. So I started walking into the forest.”

“You thought I would help you?”

“I thought you were my best shot.”

The witch frowns at him. Somehow, that is also incredibly attractive. “I don’t eat babies,” he says. “Or steal them.”

“I figured,” he replies. “That’s kind of lame. You don’t even look scary.” Well, he does, sort of, in the way that very attractive people are scary.

“I am… sorry to disappoint you,” the witch says, though he sounds more bewildered than anything.

“I forgive you,” Remus says, quite magnanimously. “I’m Remus, by the way.” He pauses. “I didn’t just sign over my soul to you, did I? By telling you that?”

The witch doesn’t answer, staring at him with wide eyes. The silence stretches on for so long that Remus becomes certain that he has, in fact, just signed away his life and autonomy, and the witch is figuring out how to break it to him. He’s not sure how he feels about that; on one hand, he is opposed to anything that will prevent him from doing what he wants when he wants to do it, but on the other hand, he’s not about to object to being bound to this man. For… various reasons. Only one of which being the fact that he saved his life.

“Remus,” the witch says at last, and a tingly feeling goes down his spine. A regular tingly feeling, not a magic one. “And your brother is Roman. Like the princes of Thaylar.”

He laughs. “Like that, yeah,” he agrees. “Sort of. I mean, I’m sure my father is about to announce that I just died in a terrible, tragic accident, and alas, Roman is going to have to be Crown Prince now, so I don’t think I’m prince of anything anymore.”

The witch breathes out, slow and long. And then, he crosses the floor, sitting by Remus’ cot. Remus’ heart thunders in his chest at his proximity, and he wonders if the witch can hear it. Surely he can. Surely it’s echoing loudly in the space between them.

“I think I understand a bit better, now,” the witch says quietly. “Your… _father_ —” His face twists, and his nose scrunches up, as if he’s just smelled something terrible— “is not known for his tolerance of magic. I’m sorry that he did that to you.”

Remus manages a smile, and tries not to think about the fact that it’s not his father’s actions that bother him. Tries not to think about the fact that he knew very well that if his father ever caught on to his abilities or his experimentation with them, he would have him killed, son or not. Tries not to think about the fact that he only ever told one person about what he could do, trusted that person with his life and everything that he is.

Tries not to think about the fact that Roman betrayed him.

“To answer your question,” the witch says, “no, you have not bound yourself to me in any way. I am no fae, nor do I have any inclination toward magical dominion over others. But to level the metaphorical playing field anyway, my name is Logan.”

_Logan._ He mouths the name, and then grins.

“Neat!” he chirps. “Did you get to see my bones, while you were working on them? Or did you just, like—” He waggles his fingers, trying to convey a sense of _magic_.

Logan stares at him. “What—”

“Did they look cool? I bet they looked really cool. I wish they hadn’t been, you know, killing me. I would have been able to appreciate the novelty a lot more.”

“You are a very strange man,” Logan says.

“That’s the general consenting.” He stops. “Con… what’s the word for when a lot of people agree on something? It’s not consenting.”

“Consensus?”

He snaps his fingers. “That’s the one.” He smiles. Logan looks vaguely like he’s been hit in the face with a poleaxe, which, fair. That’s a lot of people’s reactions to interacting with him for any given length of time. Honestly, magic aside, his father was probably looking for an excuse to get rid of him anyway. He was a terrible Crown Prince. Roman’s going to do a much better job of it.

At least Logan doesn’t look annoyed. Or frustrated. Or disgusted. Just surprised, maybe a bit intrigued, like Remus is a puzzle he hasn’t figured out how to solve yet. Remus can understand that. All humans are puzzles if you think about them the right way, an assemblage of bones and organs and fleshy bits that all have to go together just so.

“So, what now?” he asks. “I mean, since you haven’t bound me to your every whim or sacrificed me to the magic tree at the center of the forest from which all life here originates. Like witches are supposed to.”

“No self-respecting witch does the former, and I have no idea what to make of the rest of what you just said,” Logan says. “For the meantime, the only thing that happens now is that you stay here and heal. I expended a great deal of power in repairing your injuries, but magic can only go so far. If you undertake a strenuous activity too soon, your ribs might forget that they’ve been healed. So for a few days, at least, you’re stuck here.”

Remus wrenches his mind away from _strenuous activity_ with no small amount of effort.

“And after?” he says. “What then?”

It suddenly feels very important for him to know. He doesn’t dare think too far ahead, doesn’t dare contemplate his hopes too much. Doesn’t dare dwell on what he’ll do if his hopes don’t come true. He doesn’t have anywhere to go, after all, no friends to turn to, and no place of refuge in a kingdom that was once his.

Logan abruptly stands, walking back over to the table and the book. “I suppose that’s up to you,” he says. “You can go where you please when you leave. I have no say in it, though I would request that you not mention my presence here. Rumors are bad enough. The last thing I need is an invasion of knights seeking to claim my head.”

Disappointment is a familiar feeling. That doesn’t assuage its bitterness.

“Right,” he says, and the word is sour. “Right, yeah. No, don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.” His voice sounds hollow even to his own ears, and he wonders what he’ll do now. He has a few days here, and then he’ll have to be on his way. Even _he_ knows that he’s going to need some sort of a plan if he’s going to get out of the kingdom alive, which sucks, because he’s no good at planning at all.

“Unless,” Logan says, “you’d like to stay here.”

He almost sits up at that. “What?”

Logan studiously refuses to look at him. “You could stay here, if you wanted,” he says. “I understand that the accommodations are far from what you must be accustomed to. But you have a great deal of power and no training in it, so I thought that, perhaps, I could teach you to use what talents you possess. Only if you wanted.”

His jaw drops. For a long moment, he can’t think of anything to say at all.

“Of course, it was just a thought. I—”

“Logan,” he interrupts. “Of course I want to stay. Holy shit, why wouldn’t I?”

Logan turns to him, then, and to his delight, Remus sees that his cheeks are flushed. There is a shine in his eyes that looks suspiciously like excitement, and, wow, if Remus thought anger made him hot, it’s nothing on this. He looks _stunning_ , enough to make his mouth go a little bit dry. It’s something about his barely restrained eagerness, the way that it’s suddenly so obvious that Logan wants him to stay just as much as _he_ wants to stay, that Logan wants to teach him what he knows.

“Oh,” Logan says, “well.” And his blush deepens. “Very well, then.”

He grins. And then grins harder. He wishes he was able to stand right now, because this sort of rush of happy feelings calls for some shoulder wiggles and bouncing, and the movement isn’t nearly as satisfying when he’s lying down. He’ll put a pin in it for later, he supposes, because for now, the feeling itself is enough, and it’s almost enough to make him forget about what brought him here in the first place, his bones crunching as they his the ground and the memory of his brother’s horror plastered on the insides of his eyelids.

He can forget about that for now. Because he’s going to learn magic, and Logan is _blushing_ , and he’s hit rock bottom both figuratively and literally, so it’s all uphill from here, right?

“Fantastic,” he says, and he has never meant anything more.

**Author's Note:**

> If this got a continuation, which it is not, but if it did, I would be sure to elaborate on the fact that Roman was not actually trying to get Remus killed. He just got scared that Remus was going to get _himself_ killed by doing something stupid with his magic, and he thought that their dad would just... make him stop with the magic, instead of making him fall to his death. Whoopsie!
> 
> (no but actually Roman is severely traumatized now)
> 
> Anyway, I had a good time with this, and I'm @whenisitenoughtrees on tumblr if you ever want to say hi!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [where the two ends meet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28851498) by [kiapet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiapet/pseuds/kiapet)




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